


A Way Back

by ChokolatteJedi



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen, Unexpected Visitors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 09:37:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8885884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChokolatteJedi/pseuds/ChokolatteJedi
Summary: Jenkins gets an unexpected visitor from his past





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tigerbright](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigerbright/gifts).



“So, this is where you’ve been hiding?”

Jenkins froze, mid-stir, but did not dignify his unexpected guest with so much as a glance. “I have not been hiding; I have been researching. I realize that nuance would be lost on you, but there is a subtle difference.”

“And there’s that smart mouth of yours, Galeas. I certainly haven’t missed that,” his guest said, coming around the side of the long table and sitting in an empty chair. “Blasine said you would be in a mood!”

“Well, Percivale, if you didn’t want to hear me talk, you shouldn’t have sought me out. And Blasine shouldn’t have told you where I was.” Jenkins resumed stirring his tea. He should have expected that someone from his past would have found him, sooner or later. After all, name change aside, it wasn’t as though he had actually gone into hiding, unlike many of the others. He was surprised at Blasine giving him up, though. She must have had a good reason.

Percivale snorted. “Oh, physical proximity or no, I can still hear you nattering away in my memory, any time I can’t -”

“So, did you seek me out just to insult me?” Jenkins interrupted, not wanting to travel down memory lane right now. He put his spoon down and took a sip of his tea.

Percivale chuckled. “Of course not! As fun as that would be…”

“Please, get to the point, Percivale. I have very important research to do.” Jenkins resisted the urge to shuffle some papers in an appearance of busyness to prove his point. Percivale would not be fooled by his posturing.

“Research into what, exactly?” Percivale poked at a few of the odds and ends on the table, almost knocking over a small model of the globe. “Another Grail quest?”

“H- no.” Jenkins snorted. “I’ve had more than enough quests for one lifetime, thank you.”

“The Galeas I knew would never have tired of questing.” Percivale said cheerfully, spinning the globe.

“The Galeas you know is long gone,” Jenkins replied sourly. “You should go back to wherever you’ve been hiding and leave me to my research.”

Percivale was silent for a long moment. Finally he poked nervously at the base of the globe. “I had an interesting visitor the other day,” he said, clicking his fingernail nervously against the edge of the model. “I don’t know how he found me.”

“He?” That at least ruled out… oh, two people. And a few more like Jenkins himself who would not chose to seek the others out. Still, there were a dozen or so “he”s who could have sought Percivale out and put him into this state. And that was only counting those from the old days, not any other mutual acquaintances they may have met over the centuries.

Percivale frowned, but finally replied. “Lancelot.”

“Oh?” Jenkins refused to react to that name. He refused to let it have any sway over him anymore. But it at least explained why Blasine had helped Percivale to interrupt his self-made exile.

“He wants to get back to Camelot,” Percivale babbled out quickly. “He’s looking for a way and he wants the rest of us to help him. He came to me to see if I had found a way. He thinks that you or one of the others might be working on it.”

“That’s impossible,” Jenkins scoffed. Still, he would need to talk to Blasine. She and the Librarian would need to be wary, if Lancelot was looking for an artifact to send himself back in time. He finally turned and gave Percivale his full attention. “You can’t go back. “Well, I supposed with magic you could try, but only you - or a facsimile of you - would go back. You couldn’t change anything! You- he would just relive the fall all over again. Why would anyone want to put themselves through that pain?”

“He-”

“No! He is wrong! You can’t change the past,” Jenkins declared. “If we could we would have done it back then, instead of living through several lifetimes of misery!”

Percivale blushed and stammered “I just thought… maybe…”

“You thought maybe he was right,” Jenkins spat. “You thought that maybe you could go back to a time when we were all happy? When life is gay and wonderful? Well he should have thought of that a little sooner, shouldn’t he have?” Jenkins had spent many centuries moving past his anger over the fall of Camelot, but his- Lancelot - had a habit of reopening that wound like none other. Blasine didn’t even dare to mention his name in Jenkins’ presence.

Percivale was quiet for a long time. Minutes passed. Finally he sighed. “I see that I’ve disturbed you,” he murmured. “I’ll leave you to your work now.”

Jenkins refused to watch him leave; he pretended to be quite busy with the tome in front of him, and with fixing the position of the globe that Percivale had toyed with.

“You know,” Percivale said at the doorway, “The Galeas I knew would have stopped at nothing to save Camelot. The Galeas I knew would have hunted down every hint of a chance to go back home.”

“Well, as I said before,” Jenkins sniffed, “The Galeas you knew is long gone. Blasine was wrong to send you to me.”

He waited until Percivale’s footsteps had long faded away, and the silence had settled back around the annex like a cloak, before breaking down and burying his head in his arms. If only he could tell Percivale what he was doing here; what all of his experiments were for. Blasine - Charlene - had to suspect, or she wouldn’t have talked her Librarian into giving him access to the Library’s annex.

He might go by Jenkins now, but he was still the Galeas who had sought to join the Knights of Camelot. He was still the Galeas who had hunted down the Holy Grail to save his grandfather. He was still the Galeas whom the others remembered.

Despite what he had told Percivale, here, in the archives of history, he was working on a plan. Here he was tinkering with time and fate and anything that might lend itself to his quest. Here he was trying to undo the pain and disorder that his father had wrought.

He was looking for a way back.


End file.
